Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/59

 seats beneath with comfortable cushioned couches, the pots of flowers, the piano, the bookcases, the curios picked up from many lands, the deep rugs from Eastern ports, and the white-enameled doors leading to the tiny dining room, the sleeping cabins, and the bathroom with its quaint tiles and porcelain and silver fittings that would not have disgraced a luxurious yacht. This was Jimmy's home. And she had been brought into it because he had forgotten the feud and because he loved her. She turned toward him, feeling that he was still standing behind her with his back against the door and enjoying her content. But then she saw that his eyes were fixed thoughtfully in another direction. She turned again and discovered the Crusader's box that still stood, aloof, upon the top of the closed piano, its dull golden sides agleam with the light through the opened ports astern. She walked across the room and lifted it in her hands, and faced him.

“Jimmy!” she said, and held it toward him as if to surrender it for all time.

He tried to avoid the significance of her surrender.

“By the way,” he said, without meeting her eyes, “I know how to open that thing! Uncle Lem showed me the secret. There's nothing inside the box after all, but—it's yours, now, so you ought to know how it's worked. Here—let me show you.”

He took it from her hands and with an enforced gayety to hide feelings too deep and profound for expression pressed one of the golden scrolls.

“You slide this thing to one side, then you slide this one on the end, and then you do the same with this—and there you are. You can open it now. Try it and see.”

She took the box from his hands and tested the lid. It opened bravely.

“Why, you said it was empty! It isn't. There's a letter in it,” she exclaimed holding it toward him, and he leaned forward and stared.

“There wasn't anything in it the last time I opened it,” he mumbled. “See what it is. It's yours, now, you know.”

She took from the box the folded paper, put the casket back on the piano and there was a moment's wait while she unfolded their find. This is what she read, while Jimmy followed, over her shoulder:

To : I hope by the time you read this letter—which you will if all my plans have worked—you have become my niece in truth; for you are a brave and spirited little girl, entirely worthy of that brave Colonel Powell, your ancestor, and fully competent to care for the Crusader's Casket which, after consideration, I decided should be given to you to have, hold, cherish, et cetera. I've tried to give you with it an object far dearer to me, my only kinsman, my nephew, Jim Ware.

If you have read this far you are doubtless mystified by what I have written, so I shall now explain.

First, you had not been in Venice more than two days when I saw you, recognized you, and surmised that you had come with determination to try to possess yourself of that casket, which, you may remember, you rather heatedly vowed in my presence to “get some day if you lived long enough.” At that time you were such a fiery little girl that I somewhat enjoyed exasperating you just to hear what you might say, and I was tempted on that very afternoon to send you the casket with my compliments for your fearlessness.

Hence, when I saw you in Venice, I was again amused and curious to know how you would make your attempt. It was easy to employ a man to watch over your movements. I was actually standing behind the hangings in what is known as the “throne room end” of my salon when you and your ardent young fellow conspirator, the amusing Pietro Sordillo, came to look for it.

Somewhat to my surprise, on the very next day, it was reported to me by my retained observer that a young man named Ware had arrived in the port, and apparently under false pretense of being nothing but a tourist rather than the owner and master of the ship Adventure, was constantly tagging around at your very pretty and nimble heels. And in days following my observer was driven to the conclusion that my nephew's attentions were very sincere. This was almost proven so by the conversation between you and my nephew one night in the public gardens, which my faithful observer heard from the shrubbery immediately behind where you sat. When your young man Pietro began to loosen the walls of my palace by night, it was difficult for me to restrain myself; but when my nephew Jimmy visited me, declined my hospitality, and then very honorably favored me with a warning and an open declaration of war, I was having the most amusing time I have ever known in Venice. And when enough was learned to expose the full details of the plot against my property, or yours—we'll not quarrel more over that insignificant point, my dear—my amusement reached an apex. I, too, laid plans for your reception. I had but one fear, which was that a certain old bulldog of a gondolier who had attached himself to my nephew and whose name is, if I remember, Tomaso Something-or-another, would upset everything. My man Giuseppe began to find it extremely difficult to watch all of you because he could scarcely be in three or four places at once, and his chief instructions were to keep an eye on you.

However, on the night of the robbery, I hope to be behind the curtains. To save you the necessity of damaging my beautiful cabinet,